


Back at the Villa (Bellagio)

by 12XU



Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, E. M. Forster, Italy, M/M, OTP + 1, Porn With Plot, Post-Canon, Romance, Smut, mildly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 21:20:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12XU/pseuds/12XU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘“Once is enough”? Oh, is that so? Not the impression I’ve bin getting from you.’ </p><p>It’s Spring 1914, and Maurice and Alec are travelling in the Northern Italian lakes (possibly in an intended early stop on the Grand Tour). NSFW snapshot of their evolving relationship, with OC co-stars and (if it’s worked) some humorous twists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back at the Villa (Bellagio)

**1.**

Back in their room in the villa, Maurice stretched out luxuriantly on the fine carved bed. Alec rolled onto the mattress to settle beside him.

> ‘That was … quite a dessert you arranged for us,’ Maurice joked, unable to resist licking his lips.
> 
> ‘One that’s left you in need of a nap before dinner, no doubt,’ Alec replied, nuzzling against Maurice’s shoulder and looking up at him with one of his characteristic looks when he was happy and satisfied: wicked, knowing and adoring all at once.
> 
> ‘Not a nap exactly,’ Maurice grinned.

He rolled them both over and began to kiss the nape of Alec’s neck, still radiating heat from the sun, and massaged his shoulders and back through his shirt, enjoying the feel of muscle through the crumpled white linen. Alec had looked stunning in the shirt at the start of the day – his sun-kissed skin flattered by the fabric, making him look almost Italian – but it was no longer pristine now. Maurice grinned again when he spotted a grass-stain and a smear of earth; he knew how that had got there. He ran his hands up inside the shirt, and traced a finger down the curve of Alec’s spine, stopping to massage around the lumbar vertebrae just below his lover’s waist, awakening the nerve endings. Maurice had no immediate thoughts of doing more – if, in their current sated, lazy state, he bothered at all – beyond the simple pleasure of enjoying Alec’s warm skin and perhaps teasing him very slightly. But also, he wanted them to talk.

\-----------

**2.**

The unplanned coda to their picnic – in a secluded corner of the famous _giardini_ of some drunken old English aristocrat, high on one of the wooded hills above the lake – had been full of surprises, and Maurice needed to process what he thought about the new experience they had just shared. Including, perhaps, its morality – because what he and Alec had just shared, for much of their afternoon, was a very beautiful boy of 18 or 19.

Lissom, with straight dark hair worn slightly long, and stunning light grey eyes, one of the gardeners had kept shooting shy glances at them as they ate and drank. As the glances were acknowledged and became more frequent, it became clear that it would be churlish not to invite him to join them and share their remaining food and wine. Before the invitation was extended, though, Alec suggested to Maurice that this might not be all they would like to share.

The lad said his name was Gianni. Almost immediately, he accepted one of Maurice’s better cigarettes and allowed Alec to slip it between his lips and light it. He hesitated politely when first offered wine, but relented easily when they insisted it was no imposition. Maurice and Alec ensured Gianni was well fed, and practised their Italian on him for a respectable amount of time, more than once recharging his glass, before they made any hint of a further move.

Gianni had already been watching long enough from a distance to understand that Alec and Maurice were very close friends. They were both too subtle to intimidate Gianni by flirting with him openly. But by the time their charm and hospitality had done their work, the boy’s bashful gaze – made less discreet than he imagined by his extreme shyness as much as the effects of the wine – had made his attraction to Alec very obvious, although he also seemed delighted by the attentions of his handsome, well-built blond friend. Naïvely, he kept darting furtive little glances at Alec – and at any interactions that confirmed the intimacy between the two men – on the assumption that these would not be noticed. Eventually, Alec caught one shy glance and returned it – hard, with all his characteristic directness and heat. Gianni was visibly unsettled: he cast his eyes downwards, his olive cheeks blushed, and he shifted his posture very suddenly in the futile hope that the physical turbulence surging through him would not be too obvious. He was adorable, and so full of raging hormones that it was clear they would need to do almost nothing to raise the temperature. Alec ran a finger under Gianni’s jaw and tilted his chin upwards so that Gianni could no longer evade his eyes, and gazed searchingly into his discomfiture and shyness – as if he could read Gianni’s soul to set free every secret desire that was making the boy blush and shift awkwardly. The effect was so potent that Maurice had to restrain himself from gasping in excitement at Gianni’s response. The experience of watching Alec working his sexual power like this from the outside, rather than being its target, was so thrilling, that – much to his surprise – he felt no hint of jealousy.

Maurice loosened Gianni’s shirt and started to explore inside while Alec slipped a hand surreptitiously downwards – as if entirely by accident, as if he had no idea what lay inside the boy’s fly – to explore the tantalising bulge that betrayed the feelings Gianni was so shy about. He was rewarded almost instantly: the boy was so responsive that Alec could almost calibrate how Gianni’s cock swelled and stiffened and grew bigger in response to every touch, every stroke, until Alec had no choice but to unbutton and release him. The sight that sprung out caused even Alec to lose his composure for a moment: he swallowed hard, his eyes widened, and he failed to suppress a gasp at Gianni’s huge and beautiful cock. Even as Alec took up the challenge and went down on him, Gianni continued to act shy – but the intense sensuality their double attentions soon unleashed in him was such that his reserve only heightened his charm.

Their afternoon dissolved into the entirely new thrill of each watching how the beautiful Italian responded to the other, the excitement of witnessing his shyness fighting a losing battle against pleasure as they each brought him to orgasm – then how he pleasured each of them until they could take no more – then how quickly he recovered and was ready for them again. It became clear that Gianni appeared shy only because he liked men very much indeed – a liking doubled by the imaginative and considerate attentions of two strikingly beautiful young Englishmen who matched his appetite. For a while, it seemed Maurice and Alec might descend into an unseemly scrum, greedy to suck his cock, to use his mouth, to tease his beautiful arse (they had agreed with each other to take that no further). Eventually, though, they caught on that they were three excited bodies together, not two, offering possibilities and permutations beyond competing or taking turns…

\-----------

**3.**

The afternoon’s exertions had, in fact, left Maurice in no need at all of a nap. Quite the opposite. Back at the villa, as he stretched on the bed, slipping hands under Alec’s stained shirt to enjoy his sun-warmed skin, he realised that his body was still humming from their shared experience, all senses awakened and easily amenable to wanting more. His effort to think rationally about the implications – morally, and what such escapades might mean for him and Alec as a couple – did nothing to help. (What if they had exploited Gianni? What if he took a liking to one of them and felt bereft afterwards? What did it mean if he and Alec wanted to do it again? Would they become compulsive erotomanes, the sex-addicted unspeakables his whole generation had been warned against? Although Maurice had been only of prep-school age at the time of the Wilde trials, he had not escaped their long-reverberating echoes and stigmas.) The more Maurice tried to mull over these questions, the more insistently his body reminded him only of how exciting the threesome had been, reawakening a pulse of lazy sensuality.

> ‘ _So._ ’ – Alec looked pointedly at Maurice. ‘You enjoyed that, I hope?’
> 
> ‘Mmmm. No objections to your impeccable taste. Nor your impressive seduction skills. And as for the boy’s stamina…’ Maurice pursed his lips and exuded an expressive ‘phhhww’ sound.
> 
> ‘Didn’t take long for us to warm up, did he? And then watch him go! So fucking gorgeous I could eat him, but I never thought the shy little beauty would be so full of spunk.’

The silliness of this statement struck Maurice and he started to snort with laughter.

> ‘“Full of spunk” unlike you, I suppose? We didn’t just share a girl! As I’m sure you noticed.’
> 
> ‘And _you!_ ’ Alec threw a soft punch at him and put on his best mocking ‘Haw my man’ voice. ‘“No objections to your _im-pecc-a-ble_ taste or seduction skills”?’ I should hope not if you and me have made it this far together.’
> 
> ‘“I could eat him—”’ Maurice retaliated, mimicking Alec’s accent and diving down to tickle his belly. ‘You had your mouth full of him for half the afternoon! If you didn’t swallow, you know who to blame!’ He kept on tickling. ‘Eyes bigger than your belly?’

They rolled around together, vibrating and giggling, eventually calming down.

Presently Alec rolled to a standstill on his side to face Maurice, and started to caress his hair and neck a little more seriously. Their ribbing and physical sparring had reawakened the chemistry between them, making it clear to both that they were far from sexually spent for the night.

Maurice wrapped an arm around Alec and resumed his massage, but now varying the circling movement so that occasional strokes dipped teasingly lower below the sacrum. But his earlier concern still lingered.

> ‘Alec, this afternoon was … incredible. But what if you and I were just using Gianni in a way that isn’t right?’

Alec gave him a serious look.

> ‘True, he looked young. But he gave us the eye first, remember? Repeatedly, if I recall. And I didn’t see or feel no sign that he didn’t want what we gave him – quite the opposite. Did you?’
> 
> ‘Well, no. He seemed shy to start, but then – I agree – endlessly willing, and so passionate – with both of us. Perhaps that’s what worries me – he seemed so easy, almost too good to be true. What if the garden boys just think it’s what’s expected? I’d like to think he really wanted it with us – not that he was just being obliging. Or obliging me more than you.’
> 
> ‘Won’t you never stop worrying? There’s times when the pleasure is that sex is given and taken in lightness. That’s what we just did with him, int it? And don’t tell me it hasn’t left you hot for more – not feeling bad. So why shouldn’t it be the same for him with us? All this “I want to think he really wanted us” sounds like guilty tosh to me. You gave him pleasure, all right – and you saw that and heard that, and you felt it hard, just as much as I did. Don’t get me wrong – he’s an adorable boy, and he gave the pair of us an afternoon we’ll not want to forget when we grow old. But I don’t ruddy want him to “really want” us – either, or both – so much that we have to marry him or something. Do you?’

By Alec’s standards it was quite a speech.

> ‘Alec. You speak so much sense. I admit it.’
> 
> ‘And debunk your guilt nonsense, I hope! Just be thankful I have no desire to bring the winsome little stud back here as a house-boy.’

Maurice let out a groan.

> ‘Stop tempting me with your fantasies, you fiend. Once is enough for one day.’

\-----------

**4.**

Wicked Alec. Even his jokes could inflame Maurice, and this one – the thought of the two of them having Gianni together all over again, less considerately this time, in the large bed – had made him catch his breath. His fingers dipped suddenly, tracing a soft line straight down into Alec’s arse-crack. Instinctively, he found he was pressing deeper to stroke Alec more intimately and harder, caressing the knot of his anus, then teasingly slacking off so that his touch feathered only gently past.

Alec responded in kind. He took Maurice’s cock in his hand, and touched him with an exaggerated show of testing for hardness, in contrast with his feigned innocence with Gianni earlier on. He was not disappointed.

> ‘“Once is enough”? Oh, is that so? Not the impression I’ve bin getting from you since we lay down. Best quit playing with me now, then – before I get the wrong idea and “use” you “in a way that int right”.’

This gentle sarcasm was murmured in a lazy tone that made Maurice suddenly throb hard with the promise of sex, and accompanied by Alec’s most wilfully seductive touch. His fingers caressed the soft skin of Maurice’s shaft as exquisitely as if it were silk, gently working him up and down, then startling him with the unexpected – the sudden rough scrape of a finger, or slicking wet across the head – deliberately, delightedly, making him gasp. Ramping up the seduction, he leaned forward to nuzzle Maurice’s neck and nip his earlobe, licking circles with his tongue, then blowing across the wet skin.

> ‘This afternoon was just the aperitif,’ Alec whispered. ‘You know how I prefer men to boys.’
> 
> ‘You prefer men in the plural?’ Maurice teased.

Maurice was incredibly excited now, but took care not to show it too much, to seem in control. He rubbed a finger more deliberately against Alec and thrust a little way in, tracing teasing circles to loosen the knot, then penetrating deeper, starting to caress him internally until he began to moan. In a joking play on plural entry, he made a big show of thrusting in a second finger and began to fuck Alec harder with both. He could feel Alec’s heat opening up for him, the muscles dilating, receptive to more than he was getting, and Alec’s moans of pleasure grew louder – more so as he felt Maurice’s cock growing heavier in his hand and twitching involuntarily for him in response to the pleasure Maurice could feel building in Alec. Maurice’s other hand slipped between Alec’s thighs and caressed his balls, then moved forward. Alec was so stiff, so beautiful to touch, and another jolt of pure pleasure flashed through Maurice as Alec gasped harder, flushed and blatantly aroused now as the intense caresses lit almost every sexual nerve from both ends at once.

> ‘Only as a warm-up … for the real thing … with you,’ Alec whispered, desire catching his throat and fracturing his speech. As if determined to reciprocate by tormenting Maurice with want, he spat on his hand, then spat again, and worked on him – the hard ridge of his shaft, his swollen glans – in a slippery hand-job so sensitive that that Maurice feared he would either come much too fast or black out.
> 
> ‘You insatiable hussy.’

And a wanton hussy, Maurice thought – far too feverishly aroused now to care about calming his heaving breath, and undone further by thoughts of where Alec’s cock had been not long earlier. The sweet image that hovered in his mind – Gianni’s lips tentatively touching his lover there for the first time, shyly tasting Alec’s salty slit, then sucking the head; the way he had been so awestruck that he was permitted to worship Alec like that – was almost unendurably erotic, made more so as Alec’s responses amplified in the here and now. The same swollen, beautiful cock fucked itself into Maurice’s right hand; Alec’s arse burned and unfurled for his lover as Maurice finger-fucked him with his left. Alec’s hand had slackened and dropped away from Maurice, and Maurice did not even care. Not so gentle now, he devoted himself to his lover’s pleasure, crooking or scissoring his fingers inside Alec – making him cry out louder, making him arch his body, almost delirious with want, but then holding back to give him less than Maurice knew he craved.

> ‘Oh – _oh_ – _deeper_ – _more_ – oh _– please_ ,’ Alec pleaded and gasped.

Feeling his control slipping, Maurice focused his mind intently on just one, very clear, goal. His explicit vision of the afternoon’s pleasures had faded into a new haze of urgency that he knew he could not fight.

> ‘Maurice – _christ_ – please – _oh_ – _oh please_ –’

Alec begged – squirming beneath Maurice, his sphincter churning against his lover’s fingers, his whole body consumed by indiscriminate lust for any and every sensation he could find.

> ‘“Please” what?’

Maurice knew the answer perfectly well. But Alec excited him so acutely when he was like this – so undone, so irresistibly demanding, so fucking beautiful in his need – that he found it near-impossible not to push his own pleasure close to the edge by prolonging the tease.

> ‘ _Take me_ – you bastard – _fuck me_ – _just fuck me – fill me –_ _please_ –’

Without a further word, Maurice flipped Alec onto his front and spread-eagled him gracefully across the fine Italian sheets, face down and arse up. Desperate with excitement, Alec seemed unable to stop himself from writhing autoerotically against the sheets, gasping, while Maurice located the bottle of oil. Maurice lay close on his lover, kissed the back of his neck, and slipped a pillow under his belly to tilt his beautiful arse to the best angle. Alec sweated and moaned in anticipation as Maurice pulled his legs wide open until his crack and the twitching muscles of his hole were gorgeously exposed. Maurice prolonged the torment – of himself as much as Alec – just a little longer as he prepared his lover. Too gently, too slowly, he caressed the oil into Alec’s crack, across his perineum, and the places where he knew Alec was most sensitive, penetrated him again with just one, then two, oily fingers, continuing his slippery touch until Alec almost sobbed from the exquisite, cruel frustration.

> ‘Brace yourself.’

With two words, Maurice suddenly took a firm grip on Alec’s hips, stabilised him, and thrust into him – two or three shallow strokes to start, but then immediately harder and deeper. He had no urge to be rough, but he knew exactly what Alec begged and sobbed and moaned for; knew how he craved the connection of taking Maurice’s cock as deep inside him as he could safely go.

Alec let out a long deep cry of gratified pleasure, emotion and cathartic relief: relief that that the teasing foreplay was over and that ‘the real thing’ – his Maurice, beautiful Maurice, Maurice throbbing deep inside him as if their two bodies were one being, filling him with pleasure almost too much to bear – had at last been granted. Anchoring Alec with one hand, but slipping the other under his belly to caress his cock, Maurice thrust deeper and sweeter and deeper, fucking Alec to heaven and back, making love to him until the bed shook – until the crisis of pleasure made both men scream for each other so loud that it was fortunate the old villa had thick walls and deaf ears.

\-----------

**5.**

They held each other for a long time afterwards, bodies trembling and damp, fingers stroking hair, whispering their adoration, shaken by the intensity and deep emotion. As their breathing began to ease, Alec and Maurice shared a post-coital cigarette – not because they were running short, but because Maurice adored the ritual: the excuse to slip it between Alec’s lips, the intimacy of lighting it for him, then sharing. They should eat something, Maurice thought – but he had no intention of going anywhere for the rest of this evening. Not when he had Alec like this – beautiful, spent, shagged-out Alec, in their beautiful bed, in their beautiful room, with its glorious view of the lake and the mountains beyond.

> ‘Fancy room service?’

Alec darted him a startled look.

> ‘You are joking, right? You’ve worn me right out! Thought you might fuck me right through the mattress and out the other side. Can’t take no more tonight!’
> 
> ‘I meant supper in our room, you noodle – not the staff! A bite to eat here, just me and you – we needn’t even dress if we don’t want. A bath first, maybe, then eat on the balcony in our robes if we can stir that far? Whatever you wish, my lovely Alec.’

Maurice pulled Alec back deep into his arms. Alec snuggled close, nuzzling against Maurice’s shoulder and chest. He felt physically tired, and his muscles – his thighs, more intimate muscles deep inside, but especially his jaw – ached from the day’s varied exertions, but he glowed with relaxation and absolute happiness. Maurice kissed his lover’s hair as Alec considered the menu.

> ‘Antipasti? Water. Some fruit. Then later on coffee, maybe with a grappa or something? Nothing heavy. And no more wine!’
> 
> ‘All fine.’ Maurice continued to kiss and stroke Alec’s hair, very sweetly and tenderly. ‘I’ll order. Bath while we wait?’
> 
> ‘Oh, please.’

\-----------

**6.**

It was just their luck that the food arrived while they were still sharing the steaming tub.

The room bell rang. ‘Coming!’ Maurice called, drying himself off haphazardly and messily tying his robe, leaving the bathroom door slightly ajar in the rush.

> ‘ _Servizio in camera_ _, signore_.’
> 
> ‘ _Grazie_.’
> 
> ‘ _Prego_.’

Maurice took the tray, his hair and body still damp with steam, his chest half-exposed by the loosely tied robe.

There was no mistaking the way the room-service waiter was looking at him: openly flirtatious, even lecherous. The waiter himself was not unattractive – tall, slender, blunt-cut dark-blond hair, blue eyes, a long aquiline nose – a pronounced Northern Italian appearance – but it was clear he thought so, too. He raised one elegant eyebrow and looked directly at Maurice.

> ‘Do let me know, _signore_ , if you require any _extras_.’
> 
> ‘Thank you, but no, not at present.’
> 
> ‘ _Molto bene_ _, signore. Ciao_.’

With this inappropriate informality, the man bowed his head and left.

Alec had remained in the bath – wisely quiet, and wisely hidden – during this exchange. But he had heard all through the half-open door, though to his annoyance he had only caught a brief glimpse of the man. The moment the waiter had gone, he dissolved into sniggers and giggles.

> ‘Look who can’t keep the locals away from him! You’ve had your fill for the day and five minutes later they’re coming on at you all over again! Poor Morrie, too exhausted and spent to say yes to him, eh?’
> 
> ‘And then have you to contend with if I had? Poor, overworked Licky – forced to spend his afternoon ravishing the _bambino_ gardener, nailed to the mattress by wicked Morrie, every love-muscle aching and pulled – and then I bring in the waiter? Forgive me if I thought that wouldn’t go down too well.’

Maurice sat down on the edge of the bath. Alec ran a hand across his knee.

> ‘He didn’t half fancy you, though. I don’t blame him, either. Look at you – all clean, bedroom hair, bedroom eyes, half falling out of your robe. No wonder he was hot for you. I’d give you one myself right now if you hadn’t worn me out already.’

Maurice’s hand covered Alec’s. He bent and kissed Alec’s damp temple, his eyelids, his lips.

> ‘Mmmm. You’re so sweet. Is the water still hot?’
> 
> ‘Not really.’
> 
> ‘Shall I run more? Tempted to get back in there with you.’
> 
> ‘We should eat, really.’
> 
> ‘Right you are, as usual.’

Maurice brought the biggest, softest towel and wrapped it very tenderly around Alec.

\-----------

**7.**

They lounged like that on a chaise-longue in front of the floor-to-ceiling open windows, _deshabillé_ in Alec’s towel and Maurice’s robe, feeding each other morsels of the antipasti, talking and teasing about nothing much. Until Maurice suddenly stopped.

> ‘Oh god.’
> 
> ‘What?’
> 
> ‘The coffee. The drinks. If we order, he’ll be coming back.’

Alec threw back his head and roared with laughter.

> ‘Best prepare ourselves, then!’

Maurice sighed.

> ‘Unfortunately, I think that means best to put on some clothes. He fancied himself more than I fancied him, and I wouldn’t want either of us to give him the wrong idea twice in one night.’

Alec giggled, privately thinking they might have some fun at the waiter’s expense, but choosing not to share this with Maurice.

They slipped into loose shirts and trousers, but remained barefoot, then Maurice placed the order.

Shortly the bell rang, Maurice opened the door.

> ‘ _Due caffè, due grappe_ _, signore_.’
> 
> ‘ _Grazie_. Would you mind bringing the tray over here, please?’

Maurice gestured to a long low table in front of the chaise-longue. Stretched expansively along the full length of the chaise was Alec at his most handsome, his most charismatic – and his most mischievous. He beamed a broad smile at the waiter, openly sizing him up as he set down the tray. The man certainly wasn’t bad looking – but he had an immense aura of conceit and self-regard that made Alec want to giggle again. He continued to look directly at the waiter: unable to quell his amusement that the waiter had been unaware Alec was even in the room while he more or less propositioned Maurice, wickedly scanning him for some sign of embarrassment.

Intuitively joining Alec’s game, Maurice stood behind his lover and rested his left hand on Alec’s right shoulder, with a small, proud half-smile. The possessive gesture was unmistakeable. _This is who I have and love; I am all his; he is all mine._

Alec crossed his left arm across his body and reached upwards so that his hand met Maurice’s, at the same time turning his head to gaze adoringly up at him. He entwined his fingers in his lover’s, then looked back hard again at the waiter to gauge his reaction.

For a second or two the waiter stared at them almost as if he had been slapped, but then quickly regained his composure and retaliated.

> ‘ _Senore_.’ He nodded only towards Maurice, pointedly ignoring Alec. ‘ _Godervi la vostra pompinaia piccola scura_.’ [1]
> 
> ‘ _Ha già fatto_ ,’ Alec retorted. [2]

Alec had been quick to master enough Italian sexual slang for his own purposes; but it followed that he also knew an insult when he heard one.

> ‘ _Uscire_ ,’ Maurice commanded – walking to the door, and pointedly holding it open until the waiter did as he was told and left. [3]

\------

**8.**

The waiter clung to his hauteur as he went – but privately, he felt embarrassed that the darker man had understood his insult and been able to answer back.

Maurice had guessed the man’s regional background correctly. He was from Bergamo, politically a Lombard separatist, and a believer in the ‘science’ of eugenics: his pride in his own blondness was racial rather than merely vain. Confused to find that the heartstoppingly handsome Aryan guest had a companion at all, he had overlooked the likelihood that Alec, too, was a guest at the villa; and had immediately pigeonholed his dark looks and the suggestion of built muscle as southern and degenerate, and his manner as a symptom of the same disease. The waiter had been confounded to find this dark creature so sharp and insolent, able to give as good as he got in Italian, and acting as if he were every bit the equal of his blond companion. These confused feelings would continue to bug him for the remainder of Maurice and Alec’s stay. [4]

\------

**9.**

> ‘Well, that got rid of him,’ Alec smirked.
> 
> ‘At the price of an insult that could lose him his job if we chose! The vain, bitter little twink, calling a guest a cocksucker just because we made it obvious you were with me.’
> 
> ‘Well, I s’pose it’s no more than the truth. And fair dos for all the fun I had winding him up.’
> 
> ‘Cocksucker maybe – but you’re no girl!’
> 
> ‘He’d have noticed that soon enough if I’d punched him.’
> 
> ‘Thank god you didn’t. At least as things stand we’re in the right.’
> 
> ‘Coffee? Drink?’
> 
> ‘I’d almost forgotten about the coffee.’

The evening was still beautifully warm, though the coffee was not. They took it out onto the balcony and admired the splendid view across the lake. A few leisure steamers still criss-crossed in the distance, garlanded with fairy lights, their colours reflected in the water. Alec and Maurice each hooked their legs up across an arm of the wicker chairs so that they could wiggle bare toes against toes and stroke feet against legs.

> ‘Just one last thing. If I had said yes to our rude visitor, I don’t think he comes free.’

Alec stared at Maurice.

> ‘You … _what_??’

Maurice leaned forward and pointed to an item at the end of the room-service menu. Alec had ignored it, as no price was given.

> ‘“Special requests: prices by negotiation with our staff _._ ”’
> 
> ‘You are joking, right?’

Alec looked astonished, then roared with laughter so hard that they heard a murmur of objection from another balcony. To shut him up, Maurice had to get up from his chair, bear-hug his lover from behind, and clamp a hand over his mouth. Despite his effort, he could feel Alec’s body still heaving with giggles.

> ‘ _Sshhhhh_ ’, Maurice whispered. ‘ _Please_ , Alec. A shame to have to go inside.’

Alec drew one last snort back into his throat.

> ‘Sorry,’ he whispered, trying to control himself, catching Maurice’s arms so that the pair of them were fully encircled in each other’s embrace. But…’ He giggled again, and whispered: ‘Whoever would pay him? For his insults – or for being such a snotty arse?’

Maurice had no sane reply to this, so he simply rocked Alec gently in his arms for a while, then fetched their drinks. Happy and at peace in their own company, they snuggled together with the grappa and watched the moon rising over the lake. It suddenly felt like a fine end to a perfect – or certainly memorable – day.

 

**_Finito_ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> [1] ‘Enjoy your little dark [female] cocksucker.’
> 
> [2] ‘He already has.’
> 
> [3] ‘Get out.’
> 
> [4] The waiter’s Lega Nord politics are ‘inspired’ by a personal experience I had as a tourist in Bergamo at election time.
> 
> I’m not an Italian speaker – so if I’ve made an errors in grammar, vocabulary or translation, please let me know and I’ll correct them.
> 
> Anyone familiar with the timeline of World War I will understand why I’ve set this story in Spring 1914, not Summer, and particularly not late June. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Vienna occurred on 28 June 1914; World War I formally began one month later on 28 July 1914.


End file.
